by James Millar
By 1902 proletarian (Marxian) socialism had replaced agrarian populism within the Russian revolutionary movement. Faced with a declining socialist revolutionary radicalism, Lenin sought its revitalization. Like Chernyshevsky, Lenin favored the overthrow of the tsarist government and rejected the economic gradualism (called economism) of his time. Lenin did more than create a new revolutionary prototype; however, he formulated a new revolutionary catechism (Bolshevism) for conducting the revolution, one that eventually overthrew the tsarist government in 1917. See also: CHERNYSHEVSKY, NIKOLAI GAVRILOVICH; LENIN, VLADIMIR ILICH
BIBLIOGRAPHY
Tucker, Robert C, ed. (1975). The Lenin Anthology. New York: Norton. Venturi, Franco. (1966). The Roots of Revolution: A History of the Populist and Socialist Movements in Nineteenth Century Russia. New York: Grosset’s Universal Library.
DAVID K. MCQUILKIN
1664
ENCYCLOPEDIA OF RUSSIAN HISTORY
WHITE SEA CANAL
WHITE ARMY
Within weeks of the October 1917 Revolution, thousands of tsarist officers and supporters of the Provisional Government began armed resistance against the new regime. The Bolsheviks, who saw the anticommunists as more united than they actually were, named these men “White,” a term taken from the reactionary forces during the French Revolution (the communist forces against which the Whites fought were called the Reds). There were, in fact, many disparate White armies, each under its own commander and with its own objectives. They lacked a central authority to coordinate action or policies on the far-flung battlefields of the Civil War. Politically they were just as divided because some White officers were monarchists while others wanted re-establishment of the Provisional Government. In the end the White armies were bound only by a common hatred of the communists and a shared desire to retain the old borders of the Russian Empire.
The lack of unity among the White armies was but one of the reasons for their defeat. When they were successful on the battlefield, the Allied powers (Britain, France, and the United States) provided critical military assistance, but as the Whites began to lose, the aid disappeared, consigning the Whites to their fate. The fluid nature of the civil war also meant that the Whites never created permanent institutions. Matters were not helped by the officers’ reluctance to involve themselves in political matters, leaving chaos and banditry to reign in much of their territory. Thus, although it was not deliberate policy, White troops were allowed to commit atrocities during the war, such as pogroms against the Jews who lived in White-occupied lands. None of this endeared Whites to the population. Most devastating for the Whites was a paucity of new solutions to the problems that their country faced and a consequent inability to rally ordinary Russians and other nationalities to their cause.
The best known of the White armies were those led by Anton Denikin, Alexander Kolchak, and Nikolai Yudenich. Large Cossack units also fought alongside several of the White armies. One of the first anticommunist forces was the Volunteer Army, commanded first by Mkhail Alekseev and then Lavr Kornilov. When Kornilov was killed in battle, Denikin took command and led an offensive that came within 300 kilometers (186.4 miles) of Moscow. The Red Army, with twice as many men and strong cavalry units under Semeon Budenny, stopped him and forced the Volunteer Army into headlong retreat. Denikin resigned and was replaced by Peter Wrangel, whose counteroffensive was also pushed back. The tattered remnants of the Volunteer Army were evacuated from the Crimea in March 1920.
Denikin never coordinated his attacks with Kolchak’s forces, which in 1919 made spectacular gains against the Bolsheviks in eastern Russia. Kolchak claimed to represent the legitimate authority of Russia, but when Red units led by Mikhail Tukhachevsky defeated his men (including Siberian and Western armies), his bid to win the recognition of the Allied powers was doomed. Yudenich meanwhile tried and failed to capture Pet-rograd with his Northern (later “Northwestern”) Army. The collapse of their armies forced most White officers into exile in Germany and Paris, where they would plot their return to Russia for the next seventy years. See also: CIVIL WAR OF 1917-1922; COSSACKS; DENIKIN, ANTON IVANOVICH; KOLCHAK, ALEXANDER VASILIE-VICH; YUDENICH, NIKOLAI NIKOLAYEVICH
BIBLIOGRAPHY
Lincoln, Bruce. (1989). Red Victory. A History of the Russian Civil War. New York: Simon and Schuster. Luckett, Richard. (1971). White Generals. An Account of the White Movement and the Russian Civil War. New York: Viking Press. Mawdsley, Evan. (1987). The Russian Civil War. Boston: Allen amp; Unwin. Wade, Rex A. (2001). The Bolshevik Revolution and Russian Civil War. Westport, CT: Greenwood Press.
MARY R. HABECK WHITE MOVEMENT See CIVIL WAR OF 1917-1922;
WHITE ARMY.
WHITE SEA CANAL
The White Sea (Belomor) Canal in Karelia rises from Lake Onega in the south to a maximum of 108 meters (118.1 feet) at Lake Vyg and then descends to the White Sea in the north. The canal, which is 227 kilometers (141.1 miles) long (including thirty-seven artificially constructed waterways, nineteen locks, fifteen dams, and forty-nine dikes),
ENCYCLOPEDIA OF RUSSIAN HISTORY
1665
WINIUS, ANDRIES DIONYSZOON
was constructed in twenty months (November 1931-July 1933) by more than 100,000 gulag prisoners using local natural resources (rock, peat, dirt, timber), an endless supply of slave labor, and primitive tools (pickaxes, wheelbarrows, shovels, horses, and wooden pulleys). Because the shipping season is limited to six months and the canal is often shallow and narrow, traffic consists mainly of barges and small passenger or cargo vessels.
Contemplated since the sixteenth century and constructed under Josef V. Stalin, the canal shortened the journey from Leningrad to Arkhangelsk from twenty days to eight. Originally a secret military project, it was designed to enable northern troops and supply transports and sea access should Leningrad face a Baltic blockade. Economically, the canal was intended to exploit Karelia’s natural resources. Politically, it was a signature forced-labor, large construction project of the first Five-Year Plan. The government promoted the waterway as emblematic of Soviet power and Stalinist ideology, and as exemplifying reforging, the process through which hard labor re-education programs, supervised by the secret police, remade common criminals and political prisoners into model Soviet citizens. Many reforged workers perished during the construction of the canal; the survivors were transferred to the Moscow-Volga Canal project or freed. The White Sea Canal embodies the excesses of Stalinism and immortalizes the thousands who died there. See also: FIVE-YEAR PLANS; GULAG
BIBLIOGRAPHY
Baron, Nick. (2001). “Conflict and Complicity: The Expansion of the Karelian Gulag, 1923-1933.” Cahiers du Monde Russe 42:615-648. Ruder, Cynthia A. (1998). Making History for Stalin: The Story of the Belomor Canal. Gainesville: University Press of Florida.
CYNTHIA A. RUDER
WINIUS, ANDRIES DIONYSZOON
(1605-1662), merchant and factory owner.
Known in Russia as Andrei Denisovich Vinius, Andries Winius was born in Amsterdam in 1605 and died in Russia in 1662. His parents were Diony-sius Tjerckszoon Winius and Maritgen Andries1666 dochter Vekemans. He married Geertruyd van Rijn in 1628 and had three children: Andreas, Maria, and Matthias.
Winius began to trade in Russia in 1627. He was granted a patent (zhalovannaya gramota) for trade in the Russian interior in 1631 and exported 100,000 chetverti of Treasury grain the same year. In 1632 Winius, together with his brother Abraham and his partner Julius Willeken, were authorized to build an iron mill in the Tula district. The partners admitted Peter Marselis and Thomas de Swaen to their company and were given a ten-year monopoly on iron and weapons production. The water-driven Tula works was the first industrial iron producer in Russia.
Following a petition, Winius received a new patent in 1634 for trade, with improved conditions, and was appointed gost (privileged merchant). In the same year, Winius moved with his family to Moscow. The Tula partnership appears to have disintegrated by 1638; in 1639 Winius and Marselis, toge
ther with Thielman Akkema, became the holders of the charter of privilege. The new arrangement lasted until 1647, by which time a serious conflict arose between Winius and his partners. In 1648 Marselis and Akkema took control of the ironworks. Winius, in contrast, withdrew from iron production altogether. The same year, he petitioned to become a Russian subject. As compensation for his losses in Tula, Winius was granted a monopoly on tar production and trade, which he held between 1649 and 1654. He enjoyed the exclusive right to produce tar in the Northern Dvina and Sukhona valleys.
In 1652 Winius and his second wife, Gertrud Meyer (married in 1648), converted to Orthodoxy and became Russian subjects. In 1653 Winius and Ivan Yeremeyev Marsov were dispatched by the tsar to the Netherlands to acquire weapons, munitions, and woollen cloth for uniforms, as well as to hire military officers for service in the Muscovite army. They sold Treasury grain and potash to finance these purchases. Winius returned to Russia in 1654. He served as a diplomatic representative of the Russian government in the Netherlands, Italy, and Germany.
Winius’s eldest son Andreas (known as Andrei Andreyevich Vinius) served as an interpreter at the Diplomatic Chancellery as of 1664. He was sent to France, Spain, and England for diplomatic service from 1672 to 1674. He served in the Apothecary Chancellery from 1677 to 1689. He was ennobled
ENCYCLOPEDIA OF RUSSIAN HISTORY
WINTER PALACE
in 1685 and headed the diplomatic postal service thereafter. Deputy head of the Diplomatic Chancellery from 1689 to 1695, he was appointed Duma Secretary in 1695. He headed the Siberian Chancellery from 1697 to 1703 and the Artillery Chancellery as of 1701, and built iron mills on the Urals. He was dismissed from government service in 1703 for embezzlement and delay in supplying the army. He escaped to the Netherlands in 1706 but, pardoned by Peter I, returned to Russia in 1708. He translated foreign books about military matters and technology and was an important bibliophile and art collector. He died in 1717. See also: FOREIGN TRADE; GOSTI; MERCHANTS
BIBLIOGRAPHY
Fuhrmann, Joseph T. (1972). The Origins of Capitalism in Russia: Industry and Progress in the Sixteenth and Seventeenth Centuries. Chicago: Quadrangle Books.
JARMO T. KOTILAINE
WINTER PALACE
The institution of the Winter Palace dates from the first decade of St. Petersburg’s existence, when the first Winter House was constructed for Peter I in 1711. With the transfer of the capital from Moscow in 1712, the winter residence of the tsar-emperor acquired the status of a major state building. The next Winter Palace was built on the Neva River embankment in 1716-1719 to a plan by Georg Mattarnovi and was expanded in the 1720s by Domenico Trezzini. In 1732 Bartolomeo Francesco Rastrelli began work at the command of Empress Anna on a third version of the Winter Palace, which was under construction for much of the 1730s.
The planning of a new Winter Palace for Empress Elizabeth began in the early 1750s under the direction of Rastrelli, who intended to incorporate the existing third Winter Palace into the design of a still larger structure. However, as work proceeded in 1754, he concluded that the new palace would require not simply an expansion of the old, but would have to be built over its foundations. Construction continued year round despite the severe winters, and the empress-who viewed the palace as a matter of state prestige during the Seven Years’ War (1756-1763)-continued to issue orders for
ENCYCLOPEDIA OF RUSSIAN HISTORY
its rapid completion. The 859,555 rubles originally allotted for construction of the Winter Palace were to be drawn, in a scheme devised by the courtier Pyotr Shuvalov, from the revenues of state-licensed taverns. (Most of Rastrelli’s army of laborers earned a monthly wage of one ruble.) Cost overruns were chronic, and work was occasionally halted for lack of materials and money at a time when Russia’s resources were strained to the limit by the Seven Years’ War. Ultimately the project cost some 2,500,000 rubles, drawn from alcohol and salt taxes placed on an already burdened population. Elizabeth did not live to see the completion of the palace: She died on December 25, 1761. The main state rooms and imperial apartments were ready the following year for Tsar Peter III and his wife Catherine.
The basic plan of the Winter Palace consists of a quadrilateral with an interior courtyard decorated in a manner similar to the outer walls. The exterior facades of the new imperial palace-three of which are turned toward public spaces-were decorated in a late baroque style. On the Neva River facade the palace presents, from a distance, an uninterrupted horizontal sweep of more than 200 meters, while the opposite facade (on Palace Square) is marked in the center by the three arches of the main courtyard entrance-immortalized by the film director Sergei Eisenstein as well as by artists who portrayed, in exaggerated form, the “storming of the Winter Palace.” The facade overlooking the Admiralty is the one area of the structure that contains substantial elements of the third Winter Palace.
A strict symmetry reigns over the facades. Two hundred fifty columns segment some seven hundred windows, not including those of the interior court. The palace has three main floors situated over a basement level, and the structure culminates in an elaborate cornice supporting 176 large ornamental vases and allegorical statues. The original stone statuary, corroded by Petersburg’s harsh climate, was replaced in the 1890s by copper figures. The sandy color that Rastrelli intended for the stucco facade has vanished under a series of paints ranging from dull red (applied in the late nineteenth century) to turquoise in the early twenty-first century.
The interior of the Winter Palace, with its more than seven hundred rooms, has undergone many changes, and little of Rastrelli’s rococo decoration has survived. Work on the interior continued for several decades, as rooms were changed and
1667
WINTER PALACE
The Marshals’ Salon displays the ornate decor typical of the Winter Palace in St. Petersburg. THE ART ARCHIVE/BIBLIOTH?QUE DES ARTS D?CORATIFS PARIS/DAGLI ORTI. REPRODUCED BY PERMISSION. refitted to suit the tastes of Catherine the Great and her successors. Still more damaging was the 1837 palace fire that burned unchecked for more than two days and destroyed the interior. During the reconstruction most of the rooms were decorated in eclectic styles of the mid-nineteenth century or restored to the neoclassical style used by Rastrelli’s successors in decorating the palace, such as Gia-como Quarenghi. Only the main, or Jordan, staircase and the corridor leading to it (the Rastrelli Gallery) were restored by Vasily Stasov in a manner close to Rastrelli’s original design. Yet the Winter Palace remains associated above all with the name of Rastrelli, the creator of this baroque masterpiece.
In 1918 the Winter Palace and its art collection were nationalized, and in 1922 most of the building became part of the State Hermitage Museum. Substantial restoration work was interrupted by the outbreak of war, during which the museum staff performed heroically. The State Hermitage Museum reopened in 1945, and since that time the former Winter Palace has become the object of scrupulous preservation efforts devoted to one of the world’s greatest museums.
1668
ENCYCLOPEDIA OF RUSSIAN HISTORY
WITTE, SERGEI YULIEVICH
See also: ELIZABETH; FRENCH INFLUENCE IN RUSSIA; MUSEUM, HERMITAGE; RASTRELLI, BARTOLOMEO; ST. PETERSBURG
BIBLIOGRAPHY
Brumfield, William Craft. (1993). A History of Russian Architecture. New York: Cambridge University Press. Orloff, Alexander, and Shvidkovsky, Dmitri. (1996). St. Petersburg: Architecture of the Tsars. New York: Abbeville Press.
WILLIAM CRAFT BRUMFIELD
WITCHCRAFT
Russian witchcraft is best seen as a remnant of East Slavic, pre-Christian, pagan practices, elements of which survived into modern times. The earliest written record that mentions witchcraft dates to 1024 and appears in a chronicle describing the execution of sorcerers in Suzdal. Literary sources continued to speak of sorcery in later centuries and, in most cases, were connected to allegations of witchcraft causing inclement weather, droughts, crop failure, and other phenomena that resulted in fami
ne and pestilence.
During the Kievan era (roughly 900 to 1240) the most common form of popular (extralegal) witch trial appears to have been ordeal by cold water and execution by burning at the stake. As early as the second half of the eleventh century, however, Rus princes granted the Church official authority over witchcraft trials. Contrary to the Byzantine canonical practice of executing suspected witches, the Rus princes established relatively nominal monetary penalties for practicing sorcery. Despite this, unofficial persecutions of sorcerers continued to take place on occasion.
In the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, Muscovy saw a marked increase in the preoccupation with witchcraft. With the 1551 Stoglav Council headed by Ivan IV (1533-1584), the Muscovite government and church took an active interest in battling witchcraft. The council recommended that the state impose the death penalty for sorcerers, and that the church excommunicate such offenders. Ivan IV s Decree of 1552, while disregarding the recommendation of imposing the death penalty, transferred witch trials to state jurisdiction, thereby transforming witchcraft into a civil offence. This formed the background for the use of allegations of criminal witchcraft for political purposes. DurENCYCLOPEDIA OF RUSSIAN HISTORY ing the reign of Ivan IV, and more so through the subsequent Time of Troubles, the Muscovite ruling elite invoked charges of witchcraft to persecute their political enemies, both at court and outside of Moscow.
Witchcraft trials saw their heyday during the seventeenth century, when the death penalty came to be systematically applied to the guilty. However, the Muscovite witch hunts were much smaller in scale than those that were occurring in contemporary communities of Western Europe. Although the tsars sent directives to the provinces to fight sorcery until 1682, the orders were not systematic and organized, nor were the persecutions. This, in large part, is because of the deep-rooted dvoeverie (dual-faith, the holding of conflicting belief systems) among most Russians, including the ruling elite, who had ambivalent views toward remnants of pagan practices. Also, unlike in the West, where much of the “witch craze” was directed against women, the Muscovite “witch scare” charged a proportional number of men (warlocks) with sorcery. This was probably connected to the occupation of the accused-unlike in the West, Muscovy men often acted as herbalists and village healers, which were professions commonly associated with witchcraft.